Ma Lan in Shenzhen, without a meal mate
Editor’s Note
Few dietary cultures are as deeply defined by religion and embedded in ethnic life as “Halal”. After connecting with Muslim friends from the Northwest, I realised that once they leave their predominantly Muslim communities to work in the South, they have very few affordable Halal dining options beyond the “Lanzhou beef noodle shop”.
How does one maintain a Halal diet consistent with their tenets and faith? Can they find sufficient respect and convenience? Or must they compromise? At Malan’s table, we see that the act of eating is like a persistent but mild chronic pain, a constant reminder that her choices are limited and overlooked by the mainstream.
“The Worker’s Table” is a series of observations and records regarding labourers, supported by Foodthink’s “Lianhe Creative Project”. The first article, “Amei the Cleaner, Just Wanting a Proper Meal”, explores the labour and life of a cleaner named Amei through her three daily meals. This second article records the history of Halal living in Shenzhen for Malan, a Muslim girl far from her home in Ningxia.
These three points form a winding, L-shaped line, roughly one kilometre in length.
Sometimes, the three points are reduced to two: the flat and the office. This happens when Malan cooks for herself and no longer needs to visit the noodle shop.
Occasionally, she ventures off this fixed track to add a temporary point: the wet market. Located 1.5 kilometres from her home, she visits at most once a week to buy enough vegetables to last her seven days.
Then there is a more distant point, a Halal food store nine kilometres away, where Malan buys her meat. She only needs to go there once a month.
Every one of these points in Malan’s life is connected to the act of eating.
I. From Xihai-gu to Shenzhen
In the south-central part of Ningxia, there is a region known as “Xihai-gu”. In 1972, the United Nations World Food Programme defined it as “one of the regions least suitable for human habitation in the world”.
Xihai-gu is an area predominantly inhabited by the Hui people, and Malan’s hometown is in Xiji County, located within Xihai-gu. According to the seventh national census in 2020, Xiji County has a registered population of 475,000, of whom 284,000 are Hui.
Eight years ago, Malan left Ningxia, and four years ago, she transferred her household registration to Shenzhen. Under the talent introduction regulations at the time, her undergraduate degree qualified her for a municipal settlement grant of 15,000 yuan.
Between Xiji and Shenzhen, separated by 2,000 kilometres, lie the barren Loess Plateau and the prosperous coastal metropolis. Everything in Shenzhen is different from her hometown. The hot, humid, and prolonged summers are almost unbearable for her: “I can just sit there doing nothing and the sweat still pours down.” It wasn’t just the climate she struggled to adapt to; it was the food as well.
Shenzhen is a melting pot of flavours from across China and around the world. Its diverse culinary landscape caters to the consumption needs of over 17 million people. Halal restaurants are one small piece of this map.
However, for Malan, the foundation of this “diversity” is “Han-centric”. In the eight years she has spent exploring the streets and alleys of Shenzhen, Malan rarely pays attention to the restaurants she passes. Things that most people take for granted—river snail rice noodles, bucket rice, malatang, hot pot, Hunan cuisine, Cantonese rice rolls, cakes and pastries—all fall outside the scope of what she can eat.
For most Muslims, Lanzhou beef noodles are one of the few viable options for daily consumption.
III. “Lanzhou Beef Noodles”
“It was our first time going there. The person leading us said there was no food that Hui people could eat, so they planned to give us some biscuits and instant noodles.” As they wandered outside the factory, a classmate suddenly cheered—not far away was a Lanzhou beef noodle shop marked as “Halal”.
*Note: “Halal” (清真 in Chinese) originates from Arabic, meaning “permissible” according to Islamic law. As trade and population movement have increased the difficulty for individuals to distinguish Halal food, Halal certification emerged to protect the consumption rights of Muslims.
From then on, she noted that in the South, as long as one is not in an exceptionally remote corner, a Lanzhou beef noodle shop can usually be found within a few kilometres.
Halal noodle shops appeared alongside the migration of Muslims from the Northwest to the South for work. A 2022 report noted that there are approximately 2,000 Halal restaurants in Shenzhen, with Halal noodle shops accounting for over 80% of them.
These shops have sustained the mobility of Muslims in the Han-majority regions of the South. After graduating from university in 2016, Malan headed straight to Shenzhen to find work; since then, the noodle shops have been a constant throughout her life away from home.
In countless Lanzhou beef noodle shops, Malan tried every item on the menu—soup noodles, topped noodles, rice bowls, stir-fries—until she felt that “everything tasted the same”.
For a while, the sight of a Lanzhou beef noodle shop filled her with resentment. “When I got close and smelled that broth, I didn’t even want to go in.”
Now, Malan works at a grassroots government unit in Shenzhen. Because she never eats in the canteen, her colleagues asked why, and she told them, “There aren’t many dishes in the canteen that I can eat.” As they learned that Malan is Hui, some pressed further: “Is it just that you can’t eat pork? Or can’t you eat any meat at all? Then how did you grow up to be so healthy?”
Malan felt helpless. She tried to explain, wanting them to understand that it wasn’t that she didn’t eat meat, but that she didn’t eat non-Halal food. In the context of the Hui people of the Northwest, meals other than Halal are collectively referred to as “Han meals”, and “big meat” specifically refers to pork. Very few people understand this.
When the office organised team-building events or group dinners, Malan would go to a nearby Lanzhou beef noodle shop to get a takeaway, which she would bring to the venue. While her colleagues ate the dishes on the table, she ate her takeaway in front of them, and the dinner would end smoothly.
This inconspicuous marginalisation is rarely noticed. An invisible wall stands between her and most people: “I eat alone every day; I cook alone, and I eat alone at the Lanzhou noodle shop too.”
During the pandemic, Shenzhen was under lockdown. “Even the Lanzhou beef noodle shops were closed. I had to scan codes and enter the community every day; there was so much to do. Because of the pandemic, the conditions at the street canteen became terrible. The only thing I could eat were green vegetables, and they tasted awful.”
Because of the issue of food, Malan had an emotional breakdown.
This was the only time she used the word “breakdown” in relation to eating. She vented her frustrations on WeChat, where Hui friends she had met at the mosque saw it and sent her some delicious food.
“Who doesn’t love good food?” she mused. She craved street-side egg-filled pancakes, oden, and soup dumplings. She had eaten Halal versions of these snacks in the North. Now, whenever she finds a Halal restaurant she likes, Malan visits frequently, “hoping the owner’s business prospers and they stay open forever.”
III. Diet as Faith
During primary school, her older cousin took her to visit a Han classmate’s home. She watched as the classmate’s mother washed the pot several times specifically before cooking. Yet, when the food was served, Ma Lan—burned by a sense of contradiction and guilt—ultimately could not bring herself to eat a single bite.
To this day, Ma Lan’s mother still prays daily, and her father attends the mosque every Friday for Jumu’ah (Note: the congregational prayer held every Friday by Muslims). For her, faith is a matter of internal belief and sincerity; daily life is simply the manifestation of that faith—and eating is one such form.
Had it not been for this interview, Ma Lan would not have emphasised her identity or faith in her daily life. When asked what “Halal” actually means, her first reaction was, “Why does the daily routine of a person’s life always have to be turned into something conceptual?”
“Halal simply means pure,” she eventually explained, sharing her understanding. “It must be clean and hygienic, and it must comply with religious teachings.” Not eating pork, not eating carrion (animals that have died of disease, accident, or old age), not consuming animal blood, and not eating animals that have not been slaughtered according to the prayers of an Ahong, as well as the prohibition of alcohol—these points constitute the basic principles of a Halal diet.
*Note: In China, Ahong is a respectful term used by Hui and other Muslims for religious clergy.
Ma Lan understands that values such as purity, health, and respect for living beings are based on faith, rather than absolute scientific explanation.
Whenever she enters an unfamiliar Halal restaurant, Ma Lan quickly observes the environment and the staff. If she sees a staff member placing ingredients on the floor during preparation, she decides the restaurant is not clean enough and turns to leave.
With such limited options for eating out, cooking for herself became the natural choice—by the second grade of primary school, Ma Lan, a girl from the countryside, had already learned how to cook.
In the layout of self-built houses in “urban villages”, the kitchen is always adjacent to the toilet. This was also true of the large single room she rented for 750 yuan. Finding this unsettling, she moved all her ingredients and tableware to a storage rack in the main room, leaving only the gas stove and a small fridge in the kitchen.
In that single room, which one could see across in a glance, her only pieces of large furniture were two wardrobes, a bookshelf, a storage rack, a table, a bed, and a washing machine.
She keeps her miscellaneous belongings tidily arranged.
Near the window stands a storage rack; the top two shelves hold ingredients and seasonings, while the bottom two hold tableware and cookware.
Before going to bed, Ma Lan takes a handful of purple and glutinous rice, rinses them clean, and places them in the electric rice cooker. She then washes a few red dates, some maize, and some yam, placing them in the steamer basket atop the cooker. She sets the timer for porridge, and by the time she wakes the next morning, breakfast is ready.
For lunch and dinner, she cooks at least one meal a day herself; when she’s feeling diligent, she does both. “I have a method now where I put the rice, meat, and vegetables—things like potatoes and carrots—all in the rice cooker to cook together.”
When the meat in the fridge is running low, she takes a 40-minute ride on her electric scooter to a Halal shop.
Before she has even parked, the proprietress recognises her. Upon entering, Ma Lan naturally accepts a mutton mince pie handed to her. Having bought beef and mutton there for over a year, she has become well-acquainted with the owners. The proprietress lowers her voice to ask how the young man she introduced last time turned out; Ma Lan tells her straight that it wasn’t a good match.
The couple are from Gansu and opened their Halal shop here in 2019, supplying meat, grains, and oils to nearby Halal restaurants. A price list is posted on the wall; the prices for beef and mutton are little different from those in ordinary markets, around thirty to forty yuan per jin.
Working in tandem, the couple operate a cutting machine, slicing large blocks of beef imported from Malaysia into three-centimetre cubes, rushing to deliver them to a catering company that has placed an order. Lamb chops and legs hang in the freezer behind them, and another large fridge nearby is filled with pre-portioned meat. With a Muslim population exceeding 30 million, China is a primary destination for Malaysia’s Halal food exports.
The shop owner speaks with a firm confidence: “The Han people who know their stuff come specifically to me for meat. First, they can trust every aspect of the slaughter; second, our meat isn’t pumped with water.”
Each time she visits, Ma Lan buys two or three jin each of beef and mutton, along with some chicken, which she carries home to freeze—enough to last her a month.
As a child during Ramadan, Ma Lan would wake up to eat before sunrise for a whole month, abstaining from food and drink during the day until sunset. Now, after four or five days of fasting, she stops. “Mainly because I can’t get up in the morning.”
Since leaving her hometown, apart from retaining her eating habits, she feels she has “no real faith left”. “I haven’t really read the books on my shelf. Now, I wouldn’t dare say I believe, nor would I dare say I don’t.” Faith reveals its undertones in the routines of life, yet runs aground when questioned on belief and sincerity.
IV. Breaking the Rules
Take bread, for example: “Some use shortening. I didn’t know that before, so I just bought whatever. Later, someone told me that shortening is primarily made from lard. Now, I check whether it contains shortening or meat products.”
However, her principle of “avoiding Han food whenever possible” was once breached.
Two years ago, at a sub-district office where she once worked, external staff were allowed to enjoy a benefit of “three meals for five yuan”: “one yuan for breakfast, two for lunch, and two for dinner.”
“Poverty broke my bottom line,” Ma Lan admits without shame. She began eating at the canteen, sticking to vegetables, fish, and eggs—”eating what we are allowed to eat.”
Her life had been unstable in previous years, and Ma Lan had managed to save nothing. “I felt incredibly anxious, with no sense of security; I couldn’t even bring myself to spend on food.” A bowl of Lanzhou beef noodles costs 12 yuan; every time she ate them, it was accompanied by an inescapable sense of guilt: “I’ve spent money again.”
Applying this empathy to others, Ma Lan does not wish to judge Muslims who, while drifting in a foreign city, inevitably eat Han food. “My cousin came to Shenzhen for work; as long as it’s not a big piece of meat, he sometimes eats vegetables that have been stir-fried with non-Halal beef or mutton.”
Is this similar to a vegetarian eating “pot-side vegetables”—veg cooked in a meat pot? On the spectrum of Halal eating in non-Muslim countries, is “pot-side Halal” permissible?
Someone told Ma Lan that in recruitment advertisements for factories in the Dongguan and Shenzhen areas, there is a specific requirement for Hui workers: “no dietary restrictions”. In industrial zones where migrant populations gather and eating habits are mixed, “dietary restrictions” replace “Halal”, vaguely dissolving a cultural identity.
Last year, Ma Lan moved to her current workplace. After the canteen stopped providing meal subsidies, she cancelled her meal card. Now, after finishing work in the afternoon or evening, she walks two hundred metres back to her residence—enough time to prepare a simple meal.
On her days off, occasionally one or two close friends will join her to seek out Halal restaurants scattered across the city. On a whim, her journeys even extend to neighbouring cities.
Over eight years, her effort to maintain a Halal diet has been turbulent—marked by persistence, compromise, autonomy, and loss. Yet, few have ever asked her if eating in Shenzhen is convenient for a Muslim. Ma Lan says she does not believe she needs special consideration.
On the contrary, she worries that insisting on a Halal diet in Shenzhen seems too conspicuous, and thus repeatedly emphasises: “This is my personal choice.” In recent years, one obvious change is that Ma Lan has become more sensitive to “cultural opposition.”
V. Finding a Meal Buddy
Standing out against the surrounding muted tones of the cityscape, the main building—painted in striking white and green—shines brightly. Its modern architectural style, infused with Islamic cultural elements, serves as a fitting reflection of Shenzhen’s identity as a “diverse and inclusive international metropolis.”
The mosque’s functions touch every aspect of Muslim life—prayer, sermons, study, communal dining, and even matchmaking.
Ma Lan has attended several social events organised by the mosque, where she met some of her Muslim friends. From her home, the mosque is a ninety-minute journey by metro; last year, she even signed up at the mosque to study Arabic.
Leaving the mosque, Muslims who blend invisibly into a crowd of millions reappear within their own social circles on WeChat. There are groups for foodies, second-hand exchanges, board games, matchmaking, and apartment hunting… a simple greeting of “Salam” and a wish for peace are all it takes for Muslims to recognise one another.
*Note: “Salam” means “Peace be upon you”. It is the most common greeting used by Muslims and a way of expressing friendship, goodwill, and blessings.
In the foodie group, some members have hunted down the scattered halal restaurants across the city to curate a guide to Shenzhen’s halal delicacies. On weekends, some organise group meals, which often draw a good response. The appetite, built up after tiring of the ubiquitous Lanzhou beef noodles, is finally released during these gatherings.
Ma Lan joins them, though she is not driven by the food alone. “The board game group was started this year; I just wanted to get out and about to see if I could find a Hui partner.” She describes herself as having a “deep longing” to be among people of her own kind.
In the past, she dated a Han Chinese partner who was willing to follow her dietary habits. Over time, however, Ma Lan felt this was unfair to him; “differences always remain.” She is aware that some Hui-Han couples solve the dietary issue by keeping two separate pots at home—one for Han cuisine and one for Hui cuisine—each serving its own purpose without interference.
After the breakup, Ma Lan became certain that she wanted to spend her life with another Muslim. “Not being able to eat the same food is quite a hassle.”
But this is easier said than done.
Three years ago, she met a Hui man and tried dating him, only to discover he was a con artist who “scammed me out of tens of thousands of yuan.” Unable to let it go, Ma Lan filed a lawsuit and took him to court.
On a Saturday morning, a new message pops up on WeChat: someone in the board game group is organising a whole roasted lamb feast for the evening. This time, she doesn’t want to go. “I can’t justify it; a roast lamb feast costs one or two hundred yuan per person.”
Her parents constantly urge her to return to Ningxia. She once went back to her hometown for a short while, working as a substitute teacher at a village primary school for half a year. Then she left again to return to Shenzhen, eventually finding her current role in a grassroots organisation at the end of 2020, thanks to a professional certification she earned.
With a stable income, Ma Lan “loans” 1,500 yuan a month to her younger sister for university living expenses. After deducting her own expenses of less than 2,000 yuan and the nearly 20,000 yuan she sends to her parents throughout the year, she manages to save a little.
She says she often treats herself to a “feast” now—visiting a Lanzhou beef noodle shop on the weekend and ordering two stir-fry dishes. The whole meal costs sixty or seventy yuan. “I just want to have two dishes, but I can’t finish two on my own. It would be so nice to have a meal buddy.”
The day after International Women’s Day, Ma Lan travelled to Guangzhou to attend another singles mixer. Finding a meal buddy is perhaps the only urgent thing in her life right now: “At the very least, we could eat together.”
Author’s Note 1: In 2024, the global Muslim population reached 2 billion, accounting for 25% of the total population. Domestic media once cited data from the Halal Development Corporation of Malaysia stating that as early as 2014, the annual global trade volume for halal food had already reached 500 billion USD.
Author’s Note 2: “To achieve alignment and mutual recognition with the halal standards of Muslim countries worldwide” (Xinhua News Agency), five provinces and regions—Gansu, Ningxia, Qinghai, Shaanxi, and Yunnan—jointly formulated the “General Rules for Halal Food Certification” in 2013. These were subsequently abolished in 2018.
*To protect the interviewee, Ma Lan is a pseudonym
Following several rounds of interviews with six judges, 18 projects were ultimately selected for support under the Foodthink Lianhe Creation Project, five of which have been published:
&uctionsquot;Amei the Cleaner Wants a Proper Meal | The Worker’s Table&uctionsquot;
&uctionsquot;In Malaysia, Chinese Traders Only Want Grade A Durians&uctionsquot;
&uctionsquot;’Fake Meat’ Displaces Real Meat: Herders, Dining Tables, and the Amazon&uctionsquot;
&uctionsquot;Sweet Watermelons, Bitter Harvests&uctionsquot;
Editor: Xu Youyou